Tag: no platforming

Sad, isn’t it, that if fell to Rod Liddle, writing in the Spectator, to defend Joan Bakewell for her comments on anorexia made last weekend? Where are the liberal voices defending Bakewell’s right to think – and say – what she damn well likes? Drowned in a tsunami of bile on social media, that’s where.

Bakewell, who used to read Harold Pinter’s manuscripts to tell him if they were any good, who once endured being told by the head of BBC News that women would never read the news because their voices were too high, their clothes were too distracting and they would cry if the news were bad, who has, in other words, lived a little, was roundly pilloried for daring to suggest in conversation with the Sunday Times that anorexia could (my emphasis) be caused by narcissism in society. So intense did the hate fest become, you felt that obituary writers up and down the country must be dusting down Bakewell’s send-off and adding the line: ‘In later life, her reputation was tarnished by her hateful and outmoded comments on anorexia nervosa.’

Let us forget for a moment that Bakewell was being interviewed – or thought she was – about … Read More »